


Picture You

by gksmentality



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Stiles is 16 when the fire happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-26
Packaged: 2020-10-14 14:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20602676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gksmentality/pseuds/gksmentality
Summary: Stiles was around five when he first discovered there was a whole other part of the world that not everyone was aware of. He was sixteen when he met Peter Hale. In a way, it seemed like fate._________Or the one in which when Stiles said he turned into an abominable snowman, he wasn’t exactly lying. Much.





	1. Darkness Visible

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ragga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ragga/gifts).

> So I've had a complete writer's block for a couple years now. Being able to only write out a snippet of a scene at a time or a sentence that _sounds nice_ but actually has no value or is in anyway connected to a plot of any kind. I mean, I have ideas, it's just hard to put them to fruition. To be quite honest, I still have no idea of where this will go - I have 2 chapters written and a vague thought of how to proceed further but this might take me a while considering how down and uninspired I have been lately.  
Having that in mind, fair warning: I CANNOT PROMISE A QUICK FINISH TO THIS OR REGULAR UPDATES.
> 
> Other than that, I thought my babe Ragga deserved a little something for being able to put up with me this whole time. Consider this a super belated birthday present?
> 
> Also, this is not beta'ed and tbh I didn't edit too much out of fear I would hate it and decide not to post it again. So... Welcome to this mess.
> 
> Oh: Stiles is a bit older in this one.

Stiles was around five when he first discovered there was a whole other part of the world that not everyone was aware of.

He was listening to his mom sing along to one of those Christmas songs that were always on the radio before the holiday, her smile warming Stiles from the inside, her melodious voice making him forget all about his now bandaged knee from when the new kid pushed him in the playground. She looked so radiant — laughing and dancing around, all while making Stiles hot cocoa to soothe his aches — and Stiles wished he could make his mom happy like that all the time. And when he joined in, as a slightly familiar voice started singing “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow” he treasured the glint in her eye as it started snowing around them.

Right until he realised it was snowing _inside_ his house and one of the cold snowflakes fell on his nose, startling him enough to make him fall off the chair.

Mom told him then — about how everyone on her side of the family was born with a little something special, about how there are people around who can do more, _be_ more than what everyone considers normal. About how Stiles should be proud of who he is and never be ashamed.

From then on it was easy to call snowflakes to his fingertips, easy to make the top of the pond deep in the preserve freeze over so him and mom could go skating on it on special occasions, easy to make it look like winter when Beacon Hills hasn’t seen one in decades. 

*******

As much as his parents talked to him about being careful and not letting other people know, it wasn’t exactly hard to keep others from noticing that the ice cubes in his drink took just a little longer to melt and the ice-cream he ate always looked as if it was just taken from the freezer. It wasn’t as if there were many people paying attention to Stiles. And even though he didn’t have many friends to share his secret with, Stiles took the warnings to heart. He knew the things people did to one another sometimes — has seen it in the movies that were on TV when he was supposed to be sleeping and his babysitter didn’t care enough about the nightmares he would be getting after finally being put to bed, seen it in the face of his father after a particularly hard day, heard it in the whispers grown-ups shared when something tragic happened. He was already pushed around by kids like Jackson and others like Lydia didn’t even deem him worthy of breathing the same air. Kids called him names already and he really didn’t need to add “freak who could do magic” to his name which would inevitably happen if word let out about his abilities -- and that would probably turn out to be the least of his worries. 

So Stiles kept to himself. It wasn’t much of a hardship when he had his parents to keep him company, when the stories his mom told him about other beings were much more fascinating than what anyone his age could tell him. Bedtime stories about fairies, werewolves, nymphs and vampires among others that more often than not kept him awake rather than making him fall asleep, stories focussing on how to recognise them all, how to communicate with each and every one of them without insulting them and getting hurt, stories telling him about how _human_ they all were.

His mom taught him how to reach within himself and call and control his power, how to look at another and see who he really is; she taught him to see the best in people and not to judge them by the first impression.

Stiles was aware how he wasn’t the only one a little inhuman in the little town of Beacon Hills. And as Claudia taught him to recognise who the others were, he learned that the Hales howled at the full moon and the elderly Mrs. Trelawney down the block practiced magic in her free time, that the new girl Kira in his kindergarten class was some kind of fox and that there were two nymphs living in the small cottage near the lake. It was fascinating.

*******

Stiles’ mom had an affinity with nature. She would whisper to the flowers in their garden and they would bloom in response — reds, yellows and violets mixing together to be admired by the Stilinskis and their neighbours. Claudia spent her evenings with Stiles, teaching him how to garden and make the flowers blossom without any aid by magic before gifting him with a part of the garden to take care of by himself. It became something he did with her to make her happy, to bring a smile to her face when she wasn’t herself enough anymore. It hurt when his mom was getting worse and didn’t recognise Stiles any more but all of the harsh words and the acting out was worth going through if only for the times that she smiled at the flowers he brought to her bedside.

He learned to mimic flower blooms with his magic then — spent hours perfecting the images he would paint with icy flakes on the windows, on the mirrors in the hospital room, training time and time again to make ice sculptures that would look almost like glass and as beautiful as the real thing growing outside his house. It helped him cope when he could lose himself in something other than how every day the disease was leaving less and less of his mom in the woman sitting beside him in a hospital bed.

*******

When she died, Stiles wanted nothing to do with his magic anymore. What was once a source of happiness and joyful laughter suddenly turned into a curse he no longer wanted in his life. It didn’t help that he knew he had the gift only because of his mom, and every time his father saw him using magic after Claudia’s death it hurt even worse because the coldness in his eyes would be even harsher than the one of his magic.

Stiles took all the flowers away and gifted them to the neighbours who came along with apologies on their lips and casseroles in their hands — it was better than seeing the pots smashed when his dad took to the bottle too hard. He dug out the garden too. He could never take care of the flowers as well as his mom had and if they died, it would only feel worse because he couldn’t even keep _them_ alive.

The only ones he couldn’t get rid of were the African violets his mom had given to him to take care of personally. They were _his_ flowers. His to care for, his to look after, his to treasure and keep them blossoming. And he took to it with all his heart.

*******

Years later, when Stiles got used to living his life as a normal teenager, got used to taking care of his father and only using tiny spurts of magic to lay frosty snowflakes over his mother's grave, the Hale fire happened.

Stiles could feel the heat in his bones when it started — he was always a little sensitive to heat and with him having an affinity with cold it really didn’t surprise him that much. But what he felt then was different — crippling. He didn’t know what it meant — that he was getting too hot, uncomfortably so even being nowhere near a source of warmth, only for all of it to turn into agonising heat until he used his magic to cool, to soothe, to heal. It was like nothing he felt before and he used all the tools he had available to find out what affected him so.

The horror, once he heard that there was a fire in the preserve, the fear when his father went to help the fire department with putting it out, the realisation that someone wanted to harm the Hales and thought the best way to deal with them was trapping them in a fire and letting all of them burn… it hurt too much when he understood that the people responsible for the fire did that intentionally and were aware of the supernatural. It wouldn’t have worked otherwise and Stiles was smart enough to know that the hunters needed to have used some sort of agent like wolfsbane to contain the werewolves in one place long enough for them to burn to the point of death. To the point their bodies couldn’t heal themselves anymore.

It hurt Stiles and he wasn’t even there when the fire happened, wasn’t burning along with them, wasn’t the one physically feeling his family members die in the flames.

So a few days later when Stiles learned that someone _survived_, burned and still prevailed, with all the others gone — he went to the hospital.

It was easy to sneak into the long-term hospital wing. Easy to get the needed information by listening to the whispers in the hallways and find the right room in the far too familiar corridors, easy to avoid the nurses and the patients’ families by sneaking around and hiding in the corners.

The sight that met him in Peter Hale’s hospital room was more than Stiles could handle, though, and with a quick apology for intrusion he headed towards the adjoining bathroom to gather himself.


	2. All Day Permanent Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this one is super short, I am aware, but I felt like I needed Peter’s POV for a bit. 
> 
> Things will be moving hopefully a bit faster with the plot after this and I have more than 1/2 of the 3rd chapter written which is also much longer. I hope to update every 2 weeks since work is keeping me busy and I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything faster than that.
> 
> Anyway, let me know your thoughts :)

All Peter feels is the fire — the touch of flames licking his skin on the left side of his face, the smell of burned flesh in his nostrils, the bitter and dry taste of ash in his mouth. It’s all he sees too — slivers of red and orange behind his closed eyelids, his sister, his _alpha_ burning in agony right before him, the painful and visual snapping of the bonds in his soul as his pack-mates die. It’s a circle of hell he’s been stuck in for what seems like forever — not being able to look away from the memory as he doesn’t have the strength to even open his eyelids.

In the simplest of terms it’s torture. Reliving the worst moments of his life, unable to do anything but endure the pain, the memories, the sounds and smells that are stuck in his mind with seemingly no upcoming respite. It’s something he deserves, too — having to see his entire pack die in front of him time and time again. Peter was supposed to be the enforcer, the _left hand_, someone who notices and gets rid of any threats to the pack before they strike. He _should_ hurt for not being able to save them. 

It was almost better before, when he was so badly burnt he wasn’t aware of anything at all. When he almost didn’t exist here, was on a blank plane of existence that felt like nothing. But something pulled him back from that edge — two, or was it three?, pack bonds, frayed but still there.

He was brought back to his mind if only to burn, over and over again, if only to feel the already thin pack bonds get even thinner to a point he could no longer feel them over the agony. Peter couldn’t even scream.

And then, for a brief moment, there was the soothing relief of dipping in the cold ocean on a hot day. For a short period of time the heat around him fell to a manageable level and returned in a gentle simmer rather a scorching burn. It was like magic. It _was_ magic, Peter realised with a clearer head already, for nothing used in medicine could bring relief so fast to a werewolf — a being whose skin should regenerate quick enough for the heat to be instantly gone in the first place.

Peter wanted to chase the soothing cold, wanted to curl up near the source so that nothing could touch him — not the people in the hospital taking care of him nor his memories that looked more like nightmares. Something must have spooked the source of it, though, for as quick as it appeared, it was suddenly gone again. And while his skin felt just a little cooler still, he knew it wouldn’t last long.

As the pain overtook the other senses once more, he could only hope the magic would be there to soothe the heat again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, babes. While I know where I want this to go (kind of), shoot your ideas in the comments if you have any, we'll see - maybe something will actually fit my narrative or at least inspire me a bit more. 
> 
> Hope to post an update soon.


End file.
